This episode opens during the show with Casey giving football highlights. As they go to commercial, Dana says they're going to be fifteen seconds short on the Bucks-Pacers game, so Natalie asks Jeremy for something interesting about Milwaukee. There's a tall order -- fifteen seconds of interesting material about Milwaukee. Jeremy comes up with the fact that it's not the capital of Wisconsin. "And while that may be true," says Dana, "I need it to be about the team and -- oh yeah! -- I need it to be interesting." Jeremy says it was just for starters.
, Natalie says Casey has been flinching for the past couple of nights. Dana hasn't noticed, but all the TCs start arguing about whether it's a tic or a flinch. So Dana asks Casey about it, but he denies flinching, then claims there's a fly in the studio. Trouble is, no one else has seen a fly. Dave hasn't seen it; he asks Chris. "I'm not hearing it," says Chris. "There ain't no fly," says Dave, with a bit of an attitude, and a double negative used for effect. So Dana tells Casey -- get this -- that Dave says there's no fly in the studio! And then Casey tells Dana -- get this -- that there is a fly in the studio! How did this show ever get cancelled? Dana then asks Dan if there's a fly in the studio. "Let him work through it," says Danny, completely ignoring her question.
Isaac strolls into the control room. Dana points out that he's smiling and holding a ratings book, and wonders if he knows something. Isaac says that while they're still in third place, they've gained a point and a half in men aged 18-49, and they took it evenly from Fox and Bristol. "Plus I'm always smiling this time of night. You know why?" he says. "Double Chivas on the rocks?" says Dana, and you'd think it's not a good idea to point out your boss's alcoholism, except he says, "That's right." Natalie tells the anchors the good news. About the ratings, not Isaac's drinking. Oh! Jeremy has a juicy tidbit for us! Turns out the attendance at tonight's game is exactly the population of Hoisington, Kansas! Wait a minute...have you ever noticed that you never see a Bucks crowd and Hoisington, KS at the same time? There's something going on there. Dan looks nonplussed, so she tells Danny he can either relay the Hoisington info or he can talk slower. Then Danny watches Casey waving and batting at this phantom fly. "Boy, it's almost hard to believe we're in third place," he says. He's seemed pretty dour lately, almost like he writes for MBTV. Commercials.
The day, Dan and Casey walk through the newsroom. Well, Danny walks; Casey hobbles and keeps saying he's in pain, because everybody loves a whiner. Danny starts ordering the TCs around; he's looking for info on some story he's working on. And I'm grateful that no one asks him what his problem is. Oh, no! Kim does. "What happened?" she says. "Not important," says Dan, "but we have to do a five-minute scene on it, so please leave us alone." In their office, Casey says he takes care of his body so his body will take care of him, but his body deserted him, and Danny says it was Casey's brain that deserted him. So Casey whines that Dan's not concerned about Casey's "broken ankle." Funny that, since I don't think you can actually walk on broken ankles. But instead of saying that, Dan says, "Where does it hurt?" So Casey irritatedly says it's his ankle that hurts, like no wonder Dan didn't express any concern -- he knew that pain transforms Casey into an even bigger ass than normal.
Intellectual Property
The phone rings, and Casey says, "If that's Dana, I'm not here," which doesn't really strike me as an odd thing to say, but Danny makes this whole case out of it, saying, "Why would it be Dana?" and "it could be any number of people" and yes, that's true, Dan, but try to follow me on this: you're at work, Dana's your boss, she does check in with you from time to time during the work day. I mean, if this episode was fifteen seconds short, I really wish the actors had just spoken slower instead of adding filler dialogue like this. So of course it is Dana (whoa!), and she probably has no idea how cranky Dan's assholery is making me. Danny says into the phone, "Yeah, he's right here, what do you need?" Uh, sounds like she needs Casey, what do you think? Dan starts chatting with Dana. "Tell her I have a broken ankle," whispers Casey. "Casey has a broken ankle," says Dan. "Yeah, now tell her it hurts," says Casey. "He says it hurts," says Dan. "Now make this part sound dignified and heroic," begins Casey, but Danny just tells Dana, "'cause he kicked a fire hydrant on his way back from lunch," causing Casey to pitch a fit, and he tells Dan to stop talking. "He just found out you were going to Vermont this weekend with Gordon," continues Danny. , this mushroom cloud erupts. "That is not why! That is not why!" whisper-yells the mushroom cloud, hopping around the office. Casey gives up and after Dan gets off the phone, Casey settles back on the couch and says, "Thanks for the teamwork." Then he wants to know if she said anything. Ah. He was trying to get sympathy from Dana. That I can kind of understand. This reminds me of a "terribly moronic and boring" personal story of the type I often like to inject into my "arrogant and meaningless" writings (quotation marks celebrate choice bits from my first hate e-mail).
It was an early June afternoon in my last year of high school, and my friends and I were sitting around the school lounge. Someone said the baseball diamonds by the college were finally dry from the spring melt, so we figured we should put them to good use. The class most of us had in the afternoon was Physics 30, except we had gotten into review just before the diploma exams and Mr. Brady was one of those teachers who said, "You're all old enough to decide whether you want to go to class or not." I mean, he usually followed it up with, "It goes hand-in-hand with deciding whether or not you want to pass this class" but to a bunch of 17-year-olds we only heard the first part, translated as "Mr. Brady said he doesn't care if we skip class!" So we rounded up a bunch of people and gloves and a bat and headed out to the diamonds. I was in the first car of guys to arrive, and Darcy grabbed the bat and headed to home plate and told the rest of us to take the field so we could shag flies. I was in left field and the very first ball Darcy hit was going foul in my direction. I mean, way foul. But as it was the first ball of the year, I decided there was NO WAY I wasn't going to catch it, so I started sprinting for it, never taking my eyes off of it. I could have made it, too.